


[Fandom stats] Largest fandoms and femslash fandoms, Feb 2017

by toastystats (destinationtoast)



Series: Fandom Stats [81]
Category: Fandom - Fandom
Genre: Cross-Posted on Tumblr, F/F, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Gen, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2019-09-07 09:35:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16851604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/destinationtoast/pseuds/toastystats
Summary: The biggest fandoms on AO3 in Feb 2017. Includes a detailed breakdown of top tags per fandom, and a list of fandoms with the most femslash.





	1. Biggest fandoms

**Author's Note:**

> These are less polished than a lot of my stats -- more lists/raw data and fewer graphs. 
> 
> Originally posted to Tumblr:  
> [Top fandoms with detailed breakdown in 2017](http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/post/157728590234/toastystats-top-fandoms-on-ao3-as-of-february-26)  
> [Top femslash fandoms with detailed breakdown in 2017](http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/post/157728590234/toastystats-top-fandoms-on-ao3-as-of-february-26)

## TOASTYSTATS: Top fandoms on AO3

_As of February 26, 2017_

I’m doing some stats for Femslash February, and as part of the prep, I ~~pulled~~  scraped info from AO3 on all fandom tags with at least 500 fanworks.  You can see the top 100* (in terms of fanwork production) above, and you can view -- and make use of, if you like! -- the **[raw data here for over 800 fandoms.](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KnAJT6zZ4eyPXZjSbU7oCSGMpN9N3OBBBeDOlJLTZxU/edit?usp=sharing)  **The spreadsheet also includes top ships, crossover fandoms, tags, ratings, etc.

**Edit:** Because of quirks of AO3 search, some things you’ll see above are misleading (e.g., not all of the “top” characters are truly the most common; not all of the “top” ship categories are the same category as the primary ship).  Also, there are other major factors like recency that affect the stats.  Please read the notes and caveats below before writing meta or making use of this data. 

**Edit:** Also see the **[top femslash fandoms!](http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/post/157769665349/toastystats-fandoms-with-the-most-femslash-on-ao3)**

Notes below the fold, including a lot of clarifications in response to reader questions:

[[MORE]]

  * **Why just the top character?** That’s just an artifact of the screenshots -- the actual spreadsheet contains WAY more data; everything in the AO3 Sort & Filter sidebar (top ships, crossover fandoms, tags, ratings, etc.).
  * ****There are no F/F top fandoms?!  Not exactly.** **Several of the fandoms have a top ship in a different category than the top category listed. E.g., OUAT and The 100 have F/F ships as their most productive ships despite F/M being the top category, for reasons I’ll get into more in Femslash February stats.
  * **Hux is most popular?!: Nope.** If you’re upset about Hux being most common, that’s not true. I explain the methodology and tag splitting in more detail below, but suffice it to say that the way I scraped data only returns what AO3 shows in the Sort & Filter sidebar for the tag, which doesn’t add together the characters/fandoms/etc who have multiple commonly used tags, like Ben Solo | Kylo Ren.  Also, read up on recency bias below to understand why other characters like Luke, Leia, Han, etc. could actually be the most common on the internet.
  * **Is there a recency bias?** Strongly so. AO3 has only been around since 2009 and has been growing way more popular each year, so there’s a substantial recency bias. Because of this, and the fact that so many other archives exist/have existed, there are many older fandoms that are underrepresented here, and many long-running fandoms like Star Wars where the older stuff also hasn’t necessarily migrated over.  

  * **AO3 is not all of fandom!**   Yes! I cannot emphasize this enough. It’s what I’m using here because it’s easiest to get stats from, and I’ve done this comparison over a number of years.
  * **What is "top?”** “Popular” and “top” can mean many things, many of which I’ve explored in [various other posts](http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/stats#pop). In this post, it only means the ones that have the most fanworks on AO3 as of right now.  I used that term because AO3 used that terminology.
  * **Which fandoms are included? / **[X] fandom tag shouldn’t be in there.**  ** They are all the ones that are listed as having at least 500 fanworks according to the [AO3 media lists](http://archiveofourown.org/media).  I scraped them off those pages with a python script. There are all 858 fandoms in this set. *Note that there are substantially fewer fandoms than that once you eliminate the near synonyms and the ones like “Real Person Fiction” that are too broad to be used by very many fans.  I haven’t tried to do any deduplication or elimination here, because the results vary depending on editorial choices.
  * **Where did the stats for each tag come from?** After I scraped the list of the top fandoms, i obtained the statistics (number of works, ratings, etc) by using another script to go to the Works page that you get to when you click on each fandom’s AO3 tag.  The script took the Num Works from the top of the page and the other numbers from the Sort & Filter sidebar.  
  * **Some of the numbers seem inaccurate.** Some of the numbers are underreported, because the Sort & Filter sidebar only reports the literal uses of other tags that occur with the fandom tag, and not any child tags.  E.g., if “Lizzie Bennet Diaries” + “Angst” occurs 40 times, but “Lizzie Bennet Diaries” + related tags like “Fluff And Angst” occur 16 extra times, then only 40 occurrences will be reported (even though a joint search for “Lizzie Bennet Diaries” and “Angst” will return all 56).
  * **Some data is missing.** There was an error in my scripts that means it failed to properly create URLs for fandoms with non-English characters in the names.  :(  (I had this problem before and though I’d successfully debugged, but still needs more work, apparently.)  I went through by hand and filled in partial data for those fandoms (enough for my Femslash February purposes), but the rows are still unfortunately incomplete.  However, you can follow my procedure above and go to the Works page for the tag to find that data yourself.



Let me know if you have questions! Have fun playing with data. :)

**EDITS**

Clarified above the fold what is in the notes, and that the dataset contains 800+ fandoms.  A few brief wording clarifications also.

Added note about popularity.

Added clarifications from here: <http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/post/157739967319/hi-but-in-star-wars-fandom-ben-solokelo-ren-is>  

Added bold formatting/headers to Notes section.

Clarified that this is all from scripts used to scrape AO3 and no editorial choices were made.

Added link to top femslash fandoms follow up post:  <http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/post/157769665349/toastystats-fandoms-with-the-most-femslash-on-ao3>


	2. Fandoms with the most femslash

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The statement that there will be "pretty graphs soonish" is sadly a lie. I didn't get around to doing that for this data set. But the raw data is linked if you want to use it/graph it.

## TOASTYSTATS: Fandoms with the most femslash on AO3

_As of February 26, 2017_

This time around for Femslash February, I thought I’d share some numbers along the way rather than just the graphs at the end.  Here are **all the fandoms on AO3 that currently have at least 500 F/F fanworks.**

 **Edit:** If you think any of this data looks wrong/wonky, it’s straight from AO3 and there are a number of reasons that might be the case.   **This is a follow up to[this post](http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/post/157728590234/toastystats-top-fandoms-on-ao3-as-of-february-26) -- please go read the explanations and caveats there** if you plan to write meta about or make use of this data. 

There will still be pretty graphs soonish, though!  :)  And I’ll do further breakdowns beyond what’s shown above -- like which fandoms have the most femslash after you remove M/M and F/M from the picture, and which have produced the most in the past year.  I’ll also be looking for F/F/F+ polyships.  If there are other analyses you want, please let me know.

BTW, I tried to highlight the F/F ships ( **Edit:** and at least one NB/F ship, which I highlighted in italics) in the above data, but I may have missed some -- please let me know if I did.  (And sorry you can’t see some of them fully; [click through to see the full data](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1so2GfzbY-MiFkg6r8PD1RMwRYNgNOkLYgCcnFYVntlc/edit?usp=sharing).)

Raw data (including more than what you can see in these screencaps), notes, and corrections below the cut.

[Raw data](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1so2GfzbY-MiFkg6r8PD1RMwRYNgNOkLYgCcnFYVntlc/edit?usp=sharing)

Note: LaFontaine of Carmilla is nonbinary -- I highlighted this one as well (figured many people who are fans of femslash would also want to know about this), and if other nonbinary characters are in here, please let me know!

(No further notes here, yet -- please do read [this post](http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/post/157728590234/toastystats-top-fandoms-on-ao3-as-of-february-26) for plenty of notes. ;) )


End file.
